Shadow Moon

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Chapter 46

  Portland - 2009

  Matt

  Matt sat in the study of Snyder’s house, surrounded by its magnificent library of all the textbooks and reference manuals he hoped eventually to own for himself. A long wood-framed case board stood in the center of the room, jigsawed with crime scene photos of the Seattle and Portland murders, newspaper articles, victim photos, a timeline of the known murders.

  Snyder had tasked Matt with combing through the online “Street Action” forums, where local johns posted their reviews of the women and girls they used. The men insisted on calling themselves “mongers,” “hobbyists,” or “trollers.” In the ultimate irony, they felt the terms “trick” and “john” were dehumanizing.

  There was one of these posters whom Matt had zeroed in on with equal parts disgust and professional interest. The man who called himself “Devil Dawg” was what the other johns called a “pooner.”

  Matt had to see the word “pooner” in context several times to deduce it meant a senior member of the online forums, a high-status hobbyist, well-versed in the online acronyms. Someone with street cred. Matt assumed the nickname was from the word “poontang.”

  Devil Dawg posted almost nightly, warning other johns against law enforcement officers out cruising the track, boasting about being able to spot “trannies.” Other less senior posters seemed to look up to him.

  At first Matt had dismissed him as just another asshole. But as he kept reading, through night after night of depressing online chat, he was starting to think Devil Dawg was a little too interested in the Street Hunter case. He brought it up at the slightest provocation, worked it in to conversations that had nothing to do with the murders.

  Matt could almost hear the guy’s heavy breathing as he typed out grisly details. None of which were anything beyond what had been discussed in the newspapers. But Matt thought he should be interviewed. The problem there was that these sex forums were notoriously scrupulous about guarding their users’ privacy. It was going to take more authority than Matt had, to get “The Dawg”’s personal details.

  For the moment Matt contented himself with making notes and swilling coffee to keep awake. He was aware of being a little too wired. When Snyder stepped through the door, he bolted from the sofa like a track runner jumping the gun.

  Snyder looked at him with mild surprise. “I’ve just had a call from the national lab with the results on Young John Doe. There were two very interesting forensic hits on the trace materials found on the body. A mix of calcium carbonate and sulfur—a combination of minerals that one would find in geothermal areas.”

  “There must be plenty of those around here,” Matt said cautiously. He would expect so, anyway, with the volcanos.

  “Certainly there are geothermal areas in Portland. But.” Snyder paused for just the briefest second, and Matt’s pulse jumped in anticipation. “The lab also found another piece of trace evidence. Wolf fur. Identified as from a species that’s not native to Oregon.”

  Holy shit, Matt thought. He was moved from a different state.

  “Gray wolves are endangered, and found in the Western United States mostly near the Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. The fact that we can now pinpoint those locations means we have a better chance of identifying the boy. The national lab also concurs with the Portland medical examiner that Young John Doe is younger than the other victims. He was large for his age, but probably no more than thirteen years old.”

  Matt flinched. And then resolved himself. That’s the last kid you get, motherfucker. You’re going down.

  He forced his attention back to Snyder’s summation.

  “Our other Portland victim, Denise Vickery, had no such animal fur on her body. Nor did any of the previous Street Hunter victims. Another difference between the two Portland victims is that Vickery’s hyoid bone was broken, as were those bones in all the Seattle victims.”

  Evidence of strangulation, Matt knew.

  “But young John Doe’s was not,” Snyder finished. “Cause of death was the blow to the head. And the autopsy shows he was beaten severely before the lethal blow. “And, the rape, the internal tearing, was post-mortem.”

  “So… he fought,” Matt said. Fought off the rape. And the guy killed him.

  “He fought. And he showed no signs of the rectal scarring that we often see in teenagers engaged in survival prostitution—a common indication of long-term sexual abuse.”

  Matt sorted the implications in his head.

  “So Young John Doe’s body had trace elements that were not found on any of the other victims. He was several years younger than the other victims and the mode of death was different, a head wound rather than strangulation. He was wearing the club wristband, while the other victims were stripped of any identifying ornaments or documents. And his body showed no sign of prior sexual abuse.”

  He had been speaking aloud. Snyder nodded approval. “Go on.”

  “On the other hand, the female Portland victim, Denise Vickery, is looking like a victim of the Street Hunter. Which makes her chronologically the first victim we know of. And indicating the killer is possibly a Portland resident who possibly took his hunting up to Seattle as a diversionary tactic.”

  “Yes,” Snyder concurred.

  “But there are enough discrepancies with the MO and evidence on Young John Doe to indicate a possible second killer.”

  “Correct on all counts,” Snyder said. “There’s one other thing I find interesting. Se have some new information on the male victim in Seattle. Terry Laithwaite.” He stepped to the board with the crime scene photos to indicate the photo of Laithwaite’s corpse. The harsh lighting of the morgue revealed a bedraggled, slender young man with delicately feminine features.

  Snyder continued. “He had a record for solicitation.” He paused, then added with irony, “Because naturally, the seventeen-year old runaway is at fault, rather than the adult man who solicits him. But look. I’ve just obtained some new photos.”

  He turned to Matt and passed over a file. Matt opened it to look down at a photo, and experienced a moment’s confusion. He was certain he was looking at a girl. The next two photos showed Laithwaite in full drag. If he hadn’t known, Matt could easily have been fooled at first glance.

  “What do you see?” Snyder asked.

  “He did a really convincing girl,” Matt said.

  “Yes,” Snyder said. “He did. And here’s another interesting fact. Laithwaite was beaten very badly before the killer strangled him. But unlike every other of the Street Hunter’s victims, Laithwaite doesn’t appear to have been sexually assaulted.”

  Matt felt another surge of the sick urgency. “If Young John Doe was killed by a different man…” he stopped.

  “Go on,” Snyder said.

  “Then Laithwaite is the Street Hunter’s only male victim. And Laithwaite in full drag...” He walked the room, working it out. “What if the killer picked him up believing he was a girl, and flipped out when he found out the truth? He’s shocked, he’s humiliated… so he beats and strangles him in a rage. No sexual assault because men aren’t his particular turn-on.”

  Snyder was nodding slightly. “I agree. Very plausible.”

  At this point Matt could contain himself no longer. “There was a suspect on Portland PD’s list, John Lombard, who had an assault complaint on a transsexual male prostitute. Three years ago. There was a strangulation attempt. But charges were dropped.” Either the kid didn’t press charges or as so often happened in these cases, the DA’s office didn’t advocate hard enough for a transsexual victim.

  Snyder frowned. “As I recall, Portland PD eliminated Lombard for the Street Hunter. And the Street Hunter’s clear preference is for girls. What we need to find is local mongers who fit the profile.”

  Matt interrupted. “I don’t mean the Street Hunter. I mean, if Young John Doe was killed by another killer. If there is a second killer who attacks boys. Lombard could be our guy.”

  Snyd
er shook his head. “I do believe for the time being we need to treat these two killings as unrelated, and pursue them as if they are separate crimes. But our priority is the Street Hunter. I’ll have a researcher follow up on missing teenage boys in Montana and Wyoming, and areas close to Yosemite and Glacier. But I want you to go to the rape crisis clinics and youth shelters and follow up on attacks on teenage girls, focusing in particular in the few years prior to Denise Vickery’s murder.”

  Matt answered, “Yes, sir.”

  But mentally he added, And boys who dress like girls.

  Chapter 47

  Portland - present

  Singh and Snyder

  Now Singh understands. It is what she had suspected. “’The Wolf’ is the name you and ASAC Roarke gave this potential second killer.”

  Snyder gestures to her. “Yes. Young John Doe was an anomaly. To explain the discrepancies, we postulated a second killer who had dumped Young John Doe’s body in the same vicinity of the Portland victim, staging it to make the boy appear to be another victim of the Street Hunter. We called this killer the Wolf. But as I strongly cautioned Matthew at the time, we were officially consulting on the Street Hunter case. We couldn’t go off tracking a hypothetical second killer. At the same time, we couldn’t let Young John Doe confuse the Street Hunter case. We had to treat the two cases as separate.”

  Singh shivers at the thought. Two shadowy, malevolent presences.

  “Two vicious predators,” Agent Snyder says. Singh looks at him, startled. She had not been aware she had spoken aloud.

  “And now, the Huntress,” he finishes.

  Chapter 48

  Portland - 2009

  Cara

  She wakes slowly, to the sound of rain on the roof, and Jamie’s warmth beside her in the bed.

  They are in his small apartment, in his bedroom, in his bed: a mattress and box springs on the floor. She lies still and listens to his easy breathing.

  It is not like her to let someone close to her, so quickly, so easily. But for the last few days, she has done exactly that, with Jamie. She has told herself that it is in service to whatever knowledge she is supposed to get from him, part of The Work. But in bed beside him now, she is aware that that is a lie. There is a sweetness about him, a directness and tranquility, that has made her long for some connection. He is not forever. But he is some Normal.

  For the last week, she has been allowed that peace.

  But last night she dreamed of the skeleton girl. And she knows that her time with Jamie has come to an end.

  As if in answer to her thoughts, a sharp knocking comes from the next room, the front door. Jamie sits straight up in bed.

  Cara lies still, feigning sleep even as her pulse jumps and her heart begins to race.

  The knocking comes again, sharper, more urgent.

  Now, of course, the deeper meaning of their time together will be revealed. And she feels a pang of regret, that it will only come to whatever this is now, this pounding at the door.

  She feels him reach beside the bed, pull on his jeans, and then his warmth is gone. Outside the bedroom she hears the front door open and there is a hushed, urgent conversation.

  The door shuts, and Jamie comes back into the bedroom. Even with her eyes closed, she can feel the cold anxiety coming from him.

  He reaches down for clothes, and Cara opens her eyes, sits up.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.” He sits on the bed, reaches for her hand. She forces herself not to stiffen, to let him take her icy hand in his. “Go back to sleep. I’ll be back…” he trails off. “As soon as I can.”

  She ignores this. “What happened?”

  “That was Brandi’s check-in buddy. She didn’t come back last night.”

  Of course. Of course. She is angry with herself. She should have known. All the signs were there.

  Stupid. Stupid…

  Jamie is on his feet, dressing, searching for discarded socks, shoes. “She would never just go off radar like that. Not with everything going on. Something happened.”

  Cara leans over, reaching for her own clothes.

  Jamie stops and looks at her, opens his mouth to protest. She stares back at him. He nods. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Outside on the street, they pile into Jamie’s tiny Mazda. As he drives off into a steady rain, he hands his phone to her to call Brandi again.

  She has to force herself to take it. She is wary of all mobile phones, as if the mere touch of one could alert some punishing entity to her presence. She would never keep a live device herself. But she disguises her apprehension and keys in the number. There is no answer, just Brandi’s sultry recorded voice on the voice message.

  Jamie glances at her from behind the wheel, and she shakes her head. He sets his jaw and drives on.

  Their destination is a warren of warehouses at the edge of the Arts District. Jamie pilots the car through a complicated maze of streets that becomes more ominous by the block, with furtive transactions on dim doorsteps and filthy alleyways crammed with overflowing Dumpsters. He finally parks in front of a dark warehouse.

  The two of them get out of the car, looking up through the rain at the ravaged building. Some of its windows are boarded up, some newly broken.

  “The cops’ve been running people out of here,” Jamie says, staring up at the derelict building. “But there are still ways to get in.”

  She follows as he moves around the warehouse to a side alley littered with trash and glittering with broken glass. He stops under a boarded-up window. The bottom of one pane is a wide, thin board, not nailed down. Jamie pulls on it to reveal an opening that a small person could slip through. As he starts to work an arm under the wood, she stops him. “Let me.”

  He’s reluctant, but obviously too big to easily fit through himself. “Be careful. Take a look first. Don’t go all the way in unless you can see there’s no one around.”

  It’s touching, his concern. He has no idea how many times she’s exposed herself to far, far worse. But she says nothing as he boosts her up, holding her steady. She wedges an arm, a shoulder, then her head through the gap between the board and the window frame, feels the wood crack as she forces it further open with her shoulders and chest until she is able to wriggle through.

  Inside the dimness of the warehouse space she drops to the floor and turns quickly to look around her. She is in an empty corridor with vaulted ceilings. Water pools on the floor from rain leaking through boarded-up windows. She scans the darkness in both directions.

  “Mia!” Jamie calls anxiously from outside the building.

  She turns to the window, pulls the board out by leaning back with her full weight, so Jamie can squeeze through.

  He drops to the floor and straightens. They move silently together through the corridor and stop at the double doors at the end. Jamie pushes one open, takes a quick look inside. She watches his back, sees his muscles relax. He turns and motions her to follow.

  They move through the door into a central warehouse room, a former factory floor cluttered with old machinery.

  And squatters.

  She stiffens, glances around quickly—but sees only young people here, kids and older teens, huddled on dirty mattresses lying in in the drier corners and on top of a conveyor belt frame. Graffiti covers the walls. There are piles of trash and a damp, foul smell.

  And yet there is more than that. The soaring spaciousness. The rain falling through broken skylight windows. Cascading columns of water. There is a haunting beauty in it, something that reminds her of Church. There is a reason young people camp in this place.

  Jamie moves to the center of the room and calls out. “We need some help. A friend of ours is missing. We can’t get hold of her. Does anyone here know Brandi Hughes?”

  Cara watches as kids get off their mattresses and boxes and drift toward him, compelled by his open earnestness. Even as she has been.

  She remains near the doorway for a moment, and then pushes back through the swinging double
doors to explore.

  In the corridor, she moves back toward the doors at the opposite end, moving quietly so she can listen. Something has drawn her, made her step outside, away from the others.

  All her senses are tensely coiled, on high alert, as she moves slowly from the outer corridor to an inner one.

  Without the windows and skylights, she is moving into the dark. She can feel a large space around her, and there is some open structure in the wall ahead.

  She strains her eyes into the dark until she gets a vague impression… two big concrete circles, or tunnels. Some kind of ventilation fans.

  She tenses at a sound. A moaning. Terribly faint, like a wounded animal.

  She moves forward in the dark.

  Inside the ventilation tunnels, gray light comes from grilles leading to the outside of the building, enough light for her to see.

  In one of the circles is a heap of discarded trash. Only it’s not. Cara makes out a bedroll, a blanket. And curled on top of the bedroll is a broken, bloodied person. Split lip and blackened eyes. A face scarcely recognizable as human.

  Brandi.

  Cara moves closer to the concrete circle, feeling the waves of pain rolling from the heap.

  From behind her comes a burst of motion as the door flies open, the thud of feet on concrete.

  Jamie.

  He stops beside Cara as he sees the crumpled bundle. “Oh God. Oh no.”

  Brandi mumbles, a slurring of words that means broken teeth, possibly a broken jaw. Cara can barely make it out. “Not… one… of my better days.”

  Jamie crawls into the concrete hole, reaching out. On his knees beside Brandi, he carefully feels down her arms, her legs. She winces, sucks air through her breath… but there is no screaming, which Cara takes as a positive.

  Jamie gently puts his arms around her, and Brandi leans against him, sobbing into his chest.

  Brandi insists on no ambulance, then passes out as soon as Jamie picks her up. He carries her through the tomblike warehouse, out a side door to his car, where he lays her on the back seat and puts the front seats back as far as they will go to hold her in place.